Snake-fighting, higher ed, and you.

Instructions here.

Via Boing Boing.
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Rare Book Collecting Sneak

Those crazy 19th century antiquarians and their sneaky, sneaky ways. I love the image of all these sworn enemies sitting in an obscure tavern railing about how they've been wronged.

Best read this article:

The Fortsas Bibliohoax


More here.

The Incompressable John Hodgman: On Lying Artfully

From Hodgman's interview with Psychology Today*:

In both of my books, I have struggled against plain absurdity. Pure non-sequiturs (such as: "Thomas Jefferson was secretly a VIKING!") have a certain flighty charm to them. But I like some factness with my fakery.

Better to say that Thomas Jefferson was thought by his wealthy neighbors to be a witch. For really, how else to explain how this prosperous Virginian slave owner would suddenly become a radical revolutionary--other than Satanic possession?

. . .

Ideally, fake facts help to jostle our imaginations. They remind us how much of actual history is so strange, and novelistic, and practically unbelievable.

But I am not a lunatic. Obviously I know that it wasn't Satan who had taken over Jefferson's mind, but the Mole-Men.

More of the story here.

* - Note: Actual date was not "today", but in reality about a week ago.